They heard the lock click and the door swung open.
Inside, the great diva was already in her finery, a stunning green satin gown covered by a long plush cloak of deepest purple with silver threads depicting flowers, birds and stars. She paced back and forth, her eyes ablaze.
‘Have you seen this?’ she shouted at Hugh, hurling a newspaper at his head. ‘Go on, read it. Read it out loud so everyone can share in my humiliation.’
Hugh had seen the piece but decided to indulge her. He read:
WHAT DID MELBA REALLY SAY?
Today, English contralto Dame Clara Butt has told the Daily Telegraph that she has sent a cable expressing her deepest regrets and apologies to her good friend Dame Nellie Melba for a story appearing in Dame Clara’s biography, released yesterday in London. The story describes how Dame Nellie advised Dame Clara on the eve of her tour of Australia twenty-two years ago to ‘sing ’em muck: it’s all they understand.’
Dame Clara Butt denies the truth of this account. The cable sent to Dame Nellie Melba reads as follows: ‘Being on tour in India I unfortunately did not see proofs before the book was published. Am sure, knowing me, you’ll understand. So sorry for causing you annoyance, especially while you are carrying out your usual wonderful work in our much-loved Australia.’
Whatever the truth, we urge both ladies to keep calm. Muck-raking is a more suitable pastime for politicians than for Dames of the British Empire.
‘“Keep calm” they say,’ yelled Nell, ‘Bastards! Scumbags! Pouring petrol on the fire like they always do.’
‘Forget about them,’ admonished Hugh. ‘Think of your audience, Nell. They love you. You can’t let them down. You never have.’
‘Maybe there’s a first time for everything.’
For a moment, the diva’s proud carriage slumped and her head bowed. Everyone in the room heard her sigh. Despite the artful panache of her hair and make-up and the exuberance of her costume, Nell appeared frail and frightened.
Laura stepped forward. She fell to one knee and took one of the grand lady’s hands in hers. In a gesture that seemed as natural as it was quick, Laura kissed the opera singer’s fingers. ‘Please, Dame Nellie. I beg you.’
Tears ran down Nell’s cheeks. She looked at Hugh. ‘Remember Melbourne?’
Hugh nodded. He remembered. September 1902. The most famous Australian in the world, who had taken her stage name ‘Melba’ from the city of her girlhood, had returned for a royal tour by train through Victoria. This triumphal procession was to be followed by red-carpet gala dinners, a concert at the town hall and a public holiday declared in her honour. But when the train pulled into Albury on the first day of the tour, Melba discovered her father had suffered a stroke. She wanted to cancel the whole circus but he refused to allow it and so the iron-willed diva performed for her adoring public, while her heart broke for the father whom she had not seen in years.
Melba looked down at Laura. Her eyes glistened and the magnificent voice cracked with emotion. ‘Let no one say I ever gave my second best to Australia. These jackals have tried to tear me down before. I will not let them have the last word.’ She then became businesslike. ‘All out, please, I have to finish my vocal exercises. There will be a ten-minute delay.’
The concert in the casino that evening was sublime. Melba sang her most famous arias from La Boheme, Rigoletto and Lucia di Lammermoor as well as several of her most popular ballads. Hugh, Laura and Adam exchanged meaningful looks as Melba finished the concert with the sweet, silvery rendition of ‘Home, Sweet Home’ that reduced audiences to tears.
The whole house stood up, one and all, and erupted into applause, accompanied by the wild tossing of top hats into the air and heaping of floral tributes onto the stage. The great chorus of bejewelled ladies and silk-scarved gents clapped and cheered and wept until their hands were chafed and their voices hoarse. Dame Nellie stood still, her face wet with tears, her arms outspread in a seemingly endless embrace. At last she lowered her arms and an attentive silence fell on the crowd.
She spoke. ‘I have done my best. I have tried to keep faith with my art. For all that Australia has done for me, for all the beauty she has shown me, for all the love she has offered, I wish to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. I never was prouder than I am tonight to be an Australian woman.’
In the dark, Adam Fox looked at his beautiful young wife, Laura, who had so graciously asked Dame Nellie to face the fickle world with courage one more time. Laura gave him that same courage, day after day. He loved her passionately, this mysterious woman. She was not like Freya or Adelina. She asked so little of him, made so few demands. And the mystery was that Adam found himself, more than he ever had with Freya and Adelina, wanting to please her in whatever way he could. Not to keep the peace or to impress her or to seal some bargain, but because he craved her attention and love.
Laura sensed her husband’s gaze. She turned and bestowed that sweet, puzzling smile which had hooked Adam the very first time he laid eyes on her.
CHAPTER 25
* * *
Lisa
Leura and Katoomba, June 2013
Lisa arrived back from Canberra and sat alone in the bungalow with her laptop, wondering how to start making sense of it all.
With a glass of red at her elbow, Lisa sat, clicking through the files on her laptop. Apart from Jane Blunt’s letter to Angie about Freya, she had found several other pieces of the jigsaw. She opened a story that was tabbed in the National Library’s newspaper database. The Katoomba Daily, Saturday, 7 December 1937. Taking a deep gulp of shiraz, Lisa began to read:
MIRACLE BUSH SURVIVAL
After being lost for nearly two days in bushland around Asgard Swamp near Mount Victoria, Miss Monika Fox, 7, youngest daughter of hotelier Adam Fox, was found just before sunset, unharmed except for a sprained ankle, near Thor’s Head. It is thought she became separated at a family picnic on Wednesday afternoon. Grave concerns were raised for her safety during this week’s heatwave, with temperatures reaching a summer record of 101 degrees. A bushfire near Mount Victoria also threatened to enter the Grose Valley.
‘Given the extreme heat and fire danger, it is a miracle she survived,’ said Inspector Frank Redding of Katoomba Police, who supervised the search effort. ‘She made a camp in the Asgard mine kilns near the only water on the ridge not dried up after eight months of drought.’
Lisa drained her glass and poured a second. She did not believe in ghosts. Or miracles. But there it was: ‘a miracle she survived . . . a camp in the Asgard mine kilns . . . the only water on the ridge not dried up after eight months of drought.’
What on earth could this mean? Was this ‘miracle’ thanks to the bushcraft Monika had been taught by her father and their family friend, ‘Uncle’ Mel Ward? Or was it something else altogether: divine intervention? destiny? dumb luck? Lisa was stunned that this story had remained hidden from her for so long. She pulled up the page she had bookmarked in her mother’s childhood diaries, the only reference she had found to this episode so far. Monika and her sister Lottie had been fighting.
Lottie made a promise to never tell lies about me ever again – after that horrible time when I ran off into the bush for two days and poor Mama thought I was surely dead and everyone came looking for me. It was even in the paper. Papa was so angry and shouted a lot. But he kept hugging me, saying how brave and clever I was. I had never seen him cry like that before. He made me promise to never run away again. And I said, only if Lottie promises not to tell lies about me. So Papa made us both swear an oath on his Bible.
Lies, lies, so many lies. Lies of omission. Lies of commission. Elaborate acts of deception. Fake paintings, secret agreements, hidden cruelty, forbidden love. The more she uncovered the past, the more Lisa became lost herself. Her mother was a complete stranger to her: this little girl who survived the bush in a heatwave, fired a gun at her parents’ gramophone records and broke into an American military hospital.
Lisa was more confus
ed than ever about how much of her mother’s past to share with Luke over dinner tomorrow night. He had taken time out from his own heavy workload and she felt she owed him something for that. And to be honest, she felt more alone than ever with this mystery. Who else did she trust to help her make sense of it all but Luke?
‘What have you done to your hair?’
Lisa could not believe her ears. She had been at the hairdressers that morning for a cut and dye. Ella had done a wonderful job with the colour, a rich glossy chestnut that managed to avoid looking harsh or artificial, bringing out the blue sheen of her eyes. The cut was a chic, asymmetrical bob that framed her face in a seductive way, accentuating her cheekbones. Sally, the head nurse on duty at the Ritz that morning, gave her a conspiratorial grin when she walked in. Women always knew these things. Yes, alright, it was because she was having dinner with Luke. She wanted to look her best. Was that a crime?
Monika was staring at her daughter with a look of curiosity that Lisa had not seen directed at her for as long as she could remember. When Lisa sat down with her customary offering of chocolates, her mother usually bestowed on her a vague little smile no different to that she gave to each nurse and orderly as they arrived with her meds and trays of food.
But this was different. This time she actually looked at Lisa.
‘I – I got it done this morning,’ stuttered Lisa, taken aback.
‘It suits you. You should keep it like that,’ said Monika, already fishing in the chocolate box.
Tears pricked at the corner of Lisa’s eyes. ‘Thanks, Mum, I will,’ she said. ‘You up for some Scrabble?’
‘Is the Pope Polish?’ Monika was evidently not up to date on pontiffs since John Paul II, but her meaning was perfectly clear.
They played, and as usual Monika won.
‘Was Mum okay while I was in Canberra?’ Lisa asked Fiona, who came on shift as Lisa was packing up the Scrabble board. She was one of the few nurses that Lisa trusted, one of the few who retained some shred of empathy for the empty human shells in their care.
Fiona’s eyes darted sideways. ‘Hasn’t anyone told you yet?’
‘Told me? Told me what?’ Lisa felt a bubble of panic expanding in her chest.
Fiona beckoned to Lisa to step into a quiet corner out of line of sight of the nurses’ station.
‘About yesterday,’ said the nurse. ‘Someone should have texted you.’
Lisa shook her head. Maybe she had missed it. She started thumbing through the log on her phone.
Fiona lowered her voice. ‘We lost her. For about two hours.’
‘What? I don’t understand.’ How could they ‘lose’ her mother?
‘She wandered off. Put on her coat and walked out through the front garden. Nobody saw her leave. It happens sometimes. We were about to contact the police when someone found her at Bloome Park, sitting on a bench. Crying. She said she was looking for Brian – I think that was the name.’
Lisa shook her head. ‘Brian? I’ve never heard her mention a Brian.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m sure they would have texted you,’ said Fiona, placing her hand on Lisa’s shoulder. ‘She refused her meds last night as well, which she’s never done before. There’s sure to be some paperwork on it. Let me go and check it out.’
Fiona and Lisa both knew these were bad signs. Big steps along the route to late-stage Alzheimer’s. How quickly Monika’s mind would unravel was impossible to predict but there was always the possibility of her brain function deteriorating rapidly over a few weeks. Did this latest news signal a deterioration? And yet her mother had seemed more alert than usual today, even noticing Lisa’s new hairdo.
Monika had dozed off when Lisa tiptoed back to her bedside to give her a kiss goodbye. She stood for a moment, studying her mother’s face. She thought of seven-year-old Monika, so ‘clever and brave’ as Adam had called her, finding shelter in mountain bushland where fire and heat raged all around her. She thought of Monika at thirteen, watching like a hawk for signs of her mother’s infidelity. She thought of her mother at forty-five, discovering her body had betrayed her with an unwanted pregnancy as her brilliant writing career was hitting its stride, but tolerating, if not welcoming, the fact of little Lisa for the sake of her marriage. She thought about her now, trying to find herself in a disintegrating world of memories, ‘lost’ all over again but with no reliable compass to find her way home.
Monika’s life had always been about survival. There had been so many tough decisions she’d had to make on her own. Where was Laura, her mother, when Monika needed her at these times? It occurred to Lisa for the first time in her life that her own mother had probably faced the kind of loneliness that Lisa had suffered; the same longing to be able to depend on her parents’ love and the same disappointment when they could not provide it. Was it enough for Lisa to find forgiveness in her own heart? Not yet. But it was a start.
Lisa picked out her most flattering dress – a low-cut little black number – and decided on a pearl necklace and small silver earrings. As she rummaged through her jewellery box, her hand alighted on something shining in a velvet case.
Her grandmother’s gift. A silver mermaid with emerald hair set against a lapis lazuli wave. She held it up to the light. It was so beautiful. In all the years since Grandma Laura had given it to her, Lisa had never found the right moment to wear it. But she was in no doubt now. Tonight, Laura’s mermaid would be her lucky charm. Its song, reawakened from the past, would unlock the mysteries of her own heart.
Luke arrived at seven-thirty with a box of chocolates. ‘A ritual threshold gift,’ he joked as he handed them over at the front door of the bungalow. ‘And they’re all for you!’
Lisa laughed. My God! She couldn’t believe he had remembered a confidence from one of their first conversations: about how guilty she felt stealing from the box of chocolates she took to the Ritz every visit. And how much that guilt annoyed her. It was one of the things she liked most about Luke. He had a rare talent for listening. And remembering. Unlike just about every man she had ever dated, he was actually interested in her. And her family. But then, that was his job.
‘Wow. You look wonderful!’ he exclaimed. His face lit up with undisguised admiration. ‘Your hair, right?’
Lisa laughed. ‘Yes, my hair.’
She ushered him into the kitchen, where she poured a glass of wine for them both. ‘My timing is a bit out.’ Luke sipped and watched her as she talked and stirred. He asked if he could help and she gave him some parmesan to grate. She spooned him some of the sauce she was making. He nodded his approval.
Luke also looked different tonight, thought Lisa. The boyish air was gone, replaced by something more manly. He was wearing a dark cotton shirt, caramel chinos and a smart jacket that showed off his broad shoulders and back, the curves of his muscular neck and upper arms. His short, black, bristling hair and smooth, olive skin smelled good, with hints of coconut shampoo and leather aftershave. But most startling of all was the fact he had swapped his Elvis Costello glasses for contact lenses. She complimented him on the new look. He seemed pleased. ‘And I can see so much better as well.’
They headed into the living-cum-dining room, its walls crowded with artworks, including original Kitty Koala illustrations and framed photographs.
‘Are these yours?’ he asked, looking at a series of large colour prints on the far wall as he helped her lay out the bowls and plates. They were studies Lisa had done two years earlier of the Cockatoo Island dockyards in Sydney Harbour: dinosaur carcasses of towering industrial cranes, frozen mid-swing; giant ship-making sheds like corrugated-iron cathedrals streaming greenish-blue light; and massive rust-red beam benders, with their heads arched back as if looking at the sky, arranged in monumental rows like Easter Island statues.
‘These are fantastic!’ said Luke. ‘They really capture the atmosphere of the place. I must get back there one day. It’s one of my favourite spots on the harbour.’
‘Mine too,’ said Lisa as s
he served the entree. ‘I want to go camping there.’
The promise of fire was in the air that evening. It was the first time a man – apart from tradesmen – had stepped inside Lisa’s house in years. Since the end of her relationship with Paul, really. She had opened her door again to the fickle winds of opportunity and the sparks of attraction. No wonder she was feeling nervous, despite the easy companionship that had grown up between her and Luke. This was different. They had both taken care with their appearance tonight. They both knew what this was about.
She had downed most of a preparatory glass of wine while she tended to the cooking. It soothed her nerves. There was no denying she was attracted to Luke. She had decided she would accept whichever way the evening flowed. But, of course, the truth was she secretly hoped Luke was attracted to her as well.
Luke had brought his laptop and it sat, waiting, on the coffee table while Lisa’s perched on the couch. For later. They had a lot to discuss about the strange twists and turns of the Foxes’ secret history. The thrill of it hung there like a ripe peach, waiting to be picked and savoured. But by some unspoken agreement, Lisa and Luke decided to not ‘talk shop’ over dinner.
Instead, Lisa asked Luke about his childhood in the mountains. He told her about his love of bushwalking, camping trips with his parents out to Lake Lyell and Dunn’s Swamp and the Gardens of Stone. He even confessed sheepishly to being a bit of an amateur shutterbug when he was a kid and joining a camera club at school. More wine flowed. They talked about their favourite photographers, exhibitions they liked, art galleries, museums, trips they’d taken and trips they wanted to take, the most interesting people they had met, the strangest experience they’d ever had in a hotel. Apart from the Palace. They laughed – as loudly as each other – at the same jokes.
There was a lull in the conversation. It was late. A night train went rumbling through the darkness outside.
Palace of Tears Page 30